Author: punchwpadmin

In the spirit of Halloween, I’ve never understood why black cats get such a bad rap. I do know that my Menlo Park family count themselves lucky to have brought a black miniature poodle into their home. Namely, me. Hopper. In 2018, a family friend discovered me at Love & Second Chances Rescue and instantly knew I belonged with Peter and Jaime. Back then, I was known as “Chase” because I kept escaping from my foster homes. Once I settled in, it never occurred to me to run away again, and Peter and Jaime decided to rename me after their favorite artist, Edward Hopper. Here’s the funny coincidence: It didn’t take long for them to realize I have this amazing ability to hop and jump. When they gave me my first dog treat, I began to spin around on my hind legs to show my appreciation. To this day, I have a whole “bone dance” routine I do before I gobble down a yummy snack. With my dark eyes, it’s sometimes hard to tell what I’m thinking. I show my feelings by being extra snuggly, and my family calls me “the light of their lives.”

Calling All Dogs: If you’ve got quirky habits or a funny tale (or tail) to share, email your story to hello@punchmonthly.com for a chance to share a page from your Diary of a Dog in PUNCH. 

Words by Johanna Harlow

It’s not hard to spot the San Mateo County History Museum. To visit Redwood City’s courthouse turned facility of learning, look for the grandiose building with towering Corinthian pillars and hulking decorative eagles that sit on ledges like stony gargoyles. Waiting in the rotunda is Dana Neitzel, Pacifica resident and curator for the San Mateo County Historical Association (SMCHA). We’ve asked Dana for a private tour to glean insights into her work and the museum’s mission to bring Peninsula history—from the original native people to today’s inhabitants—to life.

“Our job here is to tell local stories. But we’re putting it in a national and worldwide context,” Dana explains as she crosses under the building’s massive, Renaissance revival-style dome, its stained glass twinkling like a colossal kaleidoscope. “History repeats itself. The human factor of how you interact with your world is universal.”

Speaking of “the human factor,” Dana has been a driving force behind the museum since 2009. Among her responsibilities, she develops, designs, curates, fabricates and installs four to six changing exhibits each year as well as renovates the permanent ones. The grand total to date: 61 exhibits. She also assists with SMCHA’s other two historic sites: Pacifica’s Sanchez Adobe and the Woodside Store.

Image courtesy of Jerry Pierce SMCHA Archives

When asked for favorite tidbits of local history, Dana cracks a smile and reveals that the county got its start embroiled in corruption. “One of the early exhibits (and more fun ones) I did was called Broads, Bootleggers and Bookies… We had so many bars in this museum, it was ridiculous!” The temporary exhibit is no longer available, though a permanent version dedicated to both law breakers and law enforcement can be found upstairs. The sheriff’s badges and dueling pistols seem to stare each other down from opposite sides of the room in a symbolic standoff.

As Dana leads the way into an interactive exhibit spotlighting the county’s early residents, an Ohlone chant fills the room. “We want to address the different learning styles,” she shares as she passes a traditional willow and tule hut, along with animal skins and hunting equipment in the Native American corner—then moves along to the rancho section featuring cowhides, saddles and spurs. Fueling the imagination, the walls depict Old West scenes set against the expansive frontier. “Type one is personal,” Dana elaborates. “It needs to speak to you. It needs to speak to me. Type two is the reader. ‘I want content. I’m gonna read every single label.’ So we need to make sure that the text we have is telling stories. Type three is ‘I gotta touch this! I wanna see that! That looks good!’ For those people, we want to have imagery that draws them in and makes them want to read the text. And then type four is the holistic learner. ‘I want the big idea. What is this whole thing trying to say?’”

Dana self-identifies as a big-picture type four. “I am a lifelong learner,” she clarifies. “What really interests me is learning something new.” It’s one of the reasons she first came to the museum. After nearly a decade at Oakland Museum of California—where she tackled everything from cataloging items to conducting visitor studies to organizing and transporting 2,500 Native American baskets to the museum’s new state-of-the-art warehouse—Dana joined the tight-knit team at SMCHA. Though her current job spans the responsibilities of five employees for a single department over at the Oakland Museum, she enjoys the freedom and variety of her work. “I like doing a little of everything. I get bored if I do the same thing every single day,” she confides with a laugh. “And that was what one of my references told my boss here. Every once in a while, she’ll check in and say, ‘Dana, are you bored yet?’ I’m like, ‘Nope!’”

Proving her point, she continues, “My husband teases me because every exhibit I do, I say, “Oh, this is the best exhibit I’ve done!’ He says, ‘Yeah, you said that about the last one. And the one before that. And the one before that.’”

Image courtesy of Audrey Luke and SMCHA 

As Dana weaves her way through the many experiences here, it becomes apparent that she (and the other SMCHA curators before her) haven’t taken a one-size-fits-all approach to the exhibits. Each room takes on a flavor that matches its subject matter, expressing a personality uniquely its own. At Mavericks, a surfboard simulator invites riders to hang ten amidst walls crafted like a cresting wave. At Land of Opportunity, colorful hues and an eclectic collection of multicultural clothing and artifacts honor Bay Area immigrants. And at the local and international maritime exhibit, boat models, stormy ship paintings and a pulley demonstration provide focal points.

Perhaps most impressively, there’s the “object theater” at Living the California Dream. As the voices of past promoters from different time periods try to sell you (the perspective home buyer) on the benefits of living in San Mateo County, videos play through the windows of “rooms” in grand estates and suburban 1920s kitchens. Vintage household items (ranging from a dust bag vacuum cleaner to a Laun-Dry-Ette Electric Washing Machine) are illuminated in turn.

With an emphasis on relaying personal accounts, the museum makes oral histories a priority. “So yes, we have cool artifacts,” notes Dana, “but who used those artifacts?” Visitors listen and learn as the voices of San Mateo County immigrants speak about the traditions they brought with them, a child of bootleggers shares memories of the family making grappa during Prohibition and a seasoned Mavericks surfer recounts death-defying tales.

Dana makes a light-hearted confession toward the end of our visit: “I’m not a historian. I just play one at work,” she good-naturedly admits. Really, she’s more of an anthropologist at heart. “I’m into people… So what makes humans tick. And the artifacts they use represent where they are in their lives—what their culture is about. You can learn so much about humans from the objects they use.”

As our tour ends back at the rotunda, it’s evident that Dana and her team’s tireless efforts create a conversation with San Mateo County’s rich history and culture. The voices of the Peninsula—past and present—fill this place. And it’s so much more than the distant murmur of first-hand accounts from the speakers.

Words by Johanna Harlow

Forget what you’ve seen in the movies. Real crime solving is a long slog to The Truth: shuffling through paper trails, sifting through timelines, scrutinizing witness accounts and examining seemingly mundane details. Most of us aren’t cut out for such banality. But detectives and historians are made of tougher stuff.

In 1905, detectives failed to find justice for Jane Stanford, the deceased co-founder and trustee of Stanford University. A century later, a modern-day history professor took it upon himself to uncover the troubling truth behind her demise. The saga began when Richard White, a longtime faculty member at Stanford University, stumbled across the historic cover-up.

After reading neurology professor Dr. Robert W. P. Cutler’s 2003 book proving Jane Stanford had come to an insidious end, Richard was intrigued. At the time of her passing, Mrs. Stanford’s demise was chalked up to natural causes. Which was odd. The evidence clearly pointed to her dying of strychnine poisoning—after surviving another poisoning attempt only a month earlier. And yet people with ties to the wealthy philanthropist, including college administrators, seemed oddly eager to credit her death to heart failure. Something wasn’t adding up.

According to Richard, it was apparent that private detectives hired by the university had discovered the guilty party. “Why was it that they went out of their way to make it seem that they had not discovered the murderer,” Richard wondered, “and indeed told you there had been no murder at all?” Richard’s in-depth research resulted in his own tell-all book. Published in May 2022, Who Killed Jane Stanford? earned praise from The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times.

“Stanford University appears to be a Silicon Valley university, a modern research university—but peel it back a little and the ghosts are still there,” observes Richard. “The murderer who once walked there, traces of them are still all over that campus.”

Before the bestseller, came the class. When Richard first introduced his “Who Killed Jane Stanford?” curriculum, he invited undergraduates to learn about original sources under the guise of a little crime solving. “I thought that the best way to get undergraduates interested in going into the archives would be to give them a murder mystery,” he notes, adding that he hoped the course would fuel equal parts curiosity and skepticism in his students.

Packed with bribes, unreliable witnesses and missing evidence, the case’s obvious intrigue drew the young scholars right in. The New York Post would later make a playful comparison between Richard’s book and the game of Clue, presenting suspects like a lineup with Professor Plum, Miss Scarlet and the rest of the board game regulars. Richard chuckles when asked if he too sees the resemblance. “Yeah, because I have the butler! I have the maid. I have the mansion.” The folks with a bone to pick with Jane Stanford were many: a recently fired manservant, an overtaxed personal assistant, a few aggravated housekeepers, money-driven family members, not to mention a power-hungry university president.

“One of the most haunting images I have of Jane Stanford is her funeral procession, in which many of the people suspected of her murder, many of the people who covered up her murder, were the people who walked immediately behind her casket,” the professor shares.

But whereas his students left the mystery behind at the end of each quarter, Richard couldn’t let the case go. “It’s the kind of stuff that kept me awake at night,” he relays. “There still wasn’t evidence, at least to my satisfaction, that demonstrated who killed her, let alone why they killed her—let alone why the university would go to such lengths to cover up that she had been murdered at all.” After a couple of rounds, the class had run its course—but Richard trudged onwards.

In his dogged pursuit of answers, he returned to the archives time and time again. “Like most of actual life, it’s really boring,” he quips. “You have to sit down with a large collection of papers—99% of which have absolutely nothing to do with what you’re interested in—and you have to leaf through them. You have to be willing to follow up a whole series of leads, which mostly end up in dead ends.” But the professor made progress as he combed through old legal documents, faded newspapers and Mrs. Stanford’s letters (including some tense correspondence with the founding Stanford president, David Starr Jordan).

Richard’s experience as a professor—with intimate knowledge of the inner workings of university life and campus politics—guided him to a big breakthrough in the investigation. “If you’ve worked in universities for your whole life like I have, you know in each university, there are people in the administration who know where the bodies are buried,” he reveals. At Stanford University in the early 1900s, that man was George Crothers, a bureaucrat and lawyer on the university’s board of trustees. Though George had his suspicions about Jane’s demise, he chose not to show his hand during his lifetime. He did, however, write memoranda calling attention to the manipulative and narcissistic track record of one of the case’s prime suspects. “I knew that nobody had looked at them before because they were in perfect order,” Richard said of Crothers’ papers. “It was like breaking open a new deck of cards.”

Slowly, the bigger picture began to materialize. “I just kept following the strings,” Richard observes, “and over a period of about five or six years, I began to see the outlines of what had happened—and then it was simply making sense of it.”

In hindsight, Richard reflects, “The most interesting evidence I unearthed doesn’t necessarily go straight to the murder.” Instead, it helped him better understand the society that produced the killer—and why college administrators played along with the natural death theory. “A murder trial could reveal the controversies within the university, resurrect old scandals and reveal new ones,” he points out in his book.

Richard concedes that his focus on in-depth societal analysis probably wouldn’t fly with private investigators. “Give historians a crime, and historians want to use that crime to open a door to a wider world,” he notes. “Detectives just want to solve the crime. They would kick us off the case.”
Richard isn’t surprised that modern-day Stanford hasn’t weighed in on his tale of Cardinal crime, corruption and cover-up. He’s quick to add, “I had to be careful as a historian and not just collapse the present and the past. You don’t want to impose the university onto the university in the late 19th, early 20th century. I had to throw myself back into a university that occupied the same plot of ground as modern Stanford University—but which was a very, very different place.”

A note to readers: If you crave the adrenaline of shootouts and chase scenes down dark alleys, Richard might not be your author. “It’d be a lot easier to burst into a room with a pistol and solve the crime,” he jokes. “But, you know, I’ve never known a historian who has a chase scene.”

That said, he did turn to his crime-writing brother, Stephen White of the Alan Gregory mystery series, for help “plotting” the book. “When we [as historians] know something, we just reveal it,” he acknowledges. “In the introduction, we just tell you everything you need to know. My brother would say, ‘That’s not going to work here. You’ve got to wait.’”

Withholding info for the dramatic Big Reveal at the end is key. (Which is why we’d be remiss to unveil the killer’s identity here.)

As he digs up buried truths, Richard hopes his book fosters a deeper awareness of the Peninsula. “It’s a place with a really interesting past,” he reflects. “And even though that past can sometimes be a little sordid, it’s worth looking into… And it’s there whenever you scratch the surface.”

Words by Sloane Citron

For much of my life, I’ve wondered where my looks—the good, the bad, the ugly—came from. I didn’t look a thing like my mother or my father and except for my blue eyes—a common Citron trait—there was little I shared with my ancestors. I only knew one of my four grandparents, my mother’s loving elderly mother. But in her visage, or in the old black and white pictures of the grandparents I never met, I saw nothing of myself. I often thought, like many children do, that I must have been adopted.

I’m now a grandfather, though a young one, of seven grandchildren, the oldest soon to be four years old. Even as I have become the family patriarch, there is nothing looks-wise that ties me to my parents. Like my father, I do have good hair, still there and still mostly dark. When my dad died at 86, he had thick black locks. But the hair (and the eyes) were about it. Where did I come from? Who did I resemble?

I have a bright cousin named Peter Vardon, who lives near Washington, D.C. He retired a few years ago, and, like many others with time on their hands, he embraced a new pastime: delving into family history. His mother, Evelyn, was the sister of my father. Much of his research centered upon our grandfather, Julius Citron. Every family has a standout; he was ours.

It turns out that a researcher Peter had contacted for information was coincidentally writing a book about Julius. The two of them were able to share a great deal of information, and we were able to learn many new aspects about our grandfather’s life.

“In the emerging field of serology, Citron developed the world’s first blood tests that would shape the field of serology for decades. He developed the first blood test to diagnose syphilis that would remain in use for over sixty years, popularly known as the ‘Wassermann Test,’ and the first blood test to diagnose tuberculosis.”

My father, Julius’ son, was an extremely quiet man, the result, I believe, of his introverted personality and his hard youth, including escaping from Nazi Germany in the 1930s, right after his young mother died. My father shared little. We had books in our library that Julius had written but not much was said about them or him. While I was always aware that my grandfather had done something “important,” it wasn’t until cousin Peter got to work that I gleaned the actual details.

I did get a hint of his significance a few years ago, when I was hunted down and contacted by the Einstein Papers Project at CalTech. They asked if I was related to Julius Citron. I wrote back that I was his grandson and they responded with several questions, to which I knew almost nothing. They in turn sent me correspondence between my grandfather and the legendary physicist. When I questioned Peter about this, he told me that his mother would recall Dr. Einstein bouncing her on his lap when he came to see Julius back in Berlin.

“Devoted to the German Jewish community and a lifelong Zionist, Citron, along with friend Albert Einstein, led a committee of prominent Berlin Jews including Rabbi Leo Baeck, Judah Magnus and other leading citizens in support of the creation of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.”

I wish I had known Julius, and my other grandfather too. I missed out on having a living grandfather, something I see as an enduring loss. I hope that my little grandchildren—though they would not remember me if I were to pass today—would still have the imprint of the deep love that I have for them and for the time that we have shared.

“An American colleague wrote in 1910 about Citron that ‘He is a genial, earnest worker and a delightful gentleman, thoroughly interested in his work, an excellent teacher and in all probability one of the best laboratory men on the [European] Continent,’ a testament to Citron’s international reputation from a young age.”

When cousin Peter sent me over some parts of the manuscript, one thing startled me: a picture of my grandfather as the young man described in the previous paragraph—a picture that I’d never seen. It startled me because, well, it was me! Or mostly. I had only seen pictures of Julius as an old man, but this picture, when he was around 35, was like looking at myself at that age.

So now I know that I wasn’t adopted! Though I was not endowed with his intellect and talent, I do have Julius’ looks. My sons Joshua and Jacob are named after him, and Jacob (Coby), somewhat amazingly, lives right near Julius’ original Tel Aviv home, fulfilling his great-grandfather’s dream. Right now, I don’t see myself in any of my grandchildren, but maybe someday—when they are grown up—one of them will look at my picture as a young man and say, “Hey, it’s me!”

For those who followed this year’s Platinum Jubilee in Great Britain, you should know there’s another royal lady to be found on the Peninsula. Although I’m a French bulldog, you can see that I’m holding court in San Mateo’s Central Park. The shaggy dog statue isn’t my only subject—I also play top dog to a warm-hearted pit bull and two more Frenchies. I have Bara to thank for recognizing my regal bearing and bringing me home to San Mateo, where I also enjoy spending time with Bara’s doting father, Ellis, for whom I was named, and Bara’s close friend and dog sitter, Jim. The second part of my name comes from Bara’s own, which means “rose” in Japanese—like that of the late princess Margaret Rose, sister of Queen Elizabeth. My royal status was established early by my affectionate but strong-minded personality. Some say I’m bossy—but I face an issue most other Frenchies don’t. I’m completely deaf. My color ‘pied’ is a lovely white with black spots and splashes, but missing the normal pigmentation can lead to hearing disorders. I make up for the loss by being extremely intelligent and a quick learner. My breeder recognized at once that Bara would be the perfect family for me since she’s a patient and experienced dog trainer and passionate Frenchie owner. Bara started me at once with hand signals and by 11 months, I was fully trained, gaining my AKC Canine Good Citizenship. After all, a queen needs to model proper manners. I not only know my commands but learned tricks as well—I roll over and melt hearts with my “looking sad” trick, which is all in jest since I’m a very contented pup.

Words by Jordan Greene and Sheri Baer

On the morning of November 8, 1957, 36 passengers and 8 crew members boarded a long-range Boeing 377 Stratocruiser aircraft at San Francisco International Airport. With bags and suitcases packed for the journey, they hugged their loved ones goodbye and took off for Hawaii in what was supposed to be the first leg of a round-the-world flight.
But the plane never arrived.

To this day, Pan American Flight 7—called Clipper
Romance of the Skies—remains one of aviation’s greatest mysteries, and it originated right here on the Peninsula.

Not many personally remember the details of the crash, but there are a few who remain determined to find answers. Ken Fortenberry and Gregg Herken—two men motivated by personal connections to the plane’s disappearance—crossed paths online via a messenger board about 20 years ago. After independently researching the tragedy for decades, they’ve worked together for years since, chasing down potential leads and exhausting every possible library resource and archive.

Was it a mechanical failure? Sabotage? An explosion? Or an act of intentional mass murder-suicide that killed the 44 people on the plane, including 12 from the Bay Area? Having drawn their own conclusions, Ken and Gregg now share a resolve to create a memorial to honor the lives lost.
“To me, for these people, their last good day on Earth was in the San Francisco Bay Area and many of them lived here—this was their home,” explains Ken. “They got on a flight on vacation or business and halfway through the flight, they’re gone. I think that people’s lives are worth more than just a headline in passing.”

At 11:51AM, Pan Am Flight 7 lifted off from SFO. The weather was perfect—clear skies and calm seas. As the 36 passengers settled into their seats, the pilots announced a smooth and easy 10-hour flight to Honolulu. Flight attendants started roaming the cabin to serve champagne, caviar and a seven-course dinner. With tickets for the flight running around $300 at the time, the trip was costly, but a luxurious experience.
At 5:04PM, the pilots radioed to ground control with a routine position report, which they did every hour. But at 6:04PM, there was silence. No check-in. But also no distress call. More time passed, and still not a word. At 6:35PM, Air Traffic Control issued an urgent alert: Pan Am Flight 7 had vanished.

The next day, an intensive air-sea search began. Submarines, aircrafts and all ships near the last reported position of the plane scoured the area. It wasn’t until November 14 that a search plane spotted probable wreckage on radar, which led to the discovery of 19 bodies and debris floating in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, 955 miles northeast of Honolulu. Wristwatches that broke on impact helped pinpoint the moment the plane plummeted into the water, 5:25PM, 21 minutes after the plane’s last routine position report and about 90 miles off course.

Pan Am stewardresses Marie McGrath and Yvonne Alexander

As grieving families waited for answers, the Civil Aeronautics Board launched its investigation into what had happened to Pan Am Flight 7. It took until January 1959 to deliver a disappointing, inconclusive report: It could establish “no probable cause” for the crash.

Ken Fortenberry was living in a brand-new house next to plum orchards and a dairy farm in Santa Clara when he learned that his father, Pan Am 7’s second officer, was missing. Before relocating to Santa Clara, Ken’s family had moved from New York to San Mateo, where William (Bill) Fortenberry played an instrumental role in establishing Shoreview Methodist Church. “My dad loved California, absolutely loved it,” recalls Ken. “It was just a real special place to him.”

Six years old at the time, Ken woke up on a Saturday morning to find his house full of strangers. “I don’t recall specifically the moment my mother told us the plane was missing, but I do recall just being a kid and crying my eyes out,” he says. Ken remembers his mother saying, “Your dad’s a great swimmer, Son. They’re gonna find them somewhere.” His father’s body was never recovered.

Although 65 years have passed, Ken remains grateful that happy recollections also linger, including camping trips with his father to Yosemite and Clear Lake. ”He’d always talk about how proud he was of us three boys,” Ken says. “My dad was gone for lengthy periods of time flying, but when he was home, he was also home for weeks at a time. And those weeks were memory-makers for us.” After the crash, Ken’s family moved back to South Carolina to be closer to his mother’s family. As he grew up, he turned to old letters his dad had written from overseas. “He was a prodigious writer,” Ken notes. “And those letters became my dad talking to me.”

In 1957, Gregg Herken had recently moved to San Mateo from Denver and was having a hard time fitting in at his new school. “I had a buckskin coat and I thought it was the coolest thing, but it made me stand out,” he recounts. Marie McGrath, Gregg’s substitute teacher at Sunnybrae Elementary, quietly suggested to his parents that he “ditch the coat.” Not much later, Gregg showed up to school in a new San Francisco Giants jacket. “I wore that to school and suddenly, I was popular,” he reminisces. “I owe Marie McGrath for that.”

A Pan Am stewardess, Marie doubled as a substitute teacher, a common second career during aviation downtime. Gregg, who graduated from Aragon High School in 1965, recalls Marie sharing stories of her adventures and bringing food from the Clipper for a class luau. “She told us about Hawaii,” he recollects, “and for a fourth-grader who had just moved from Denver, this was very exotic stuff.” Marie also substituted at Abbott Middle School, where Gregg’s mom worked as a secretary.

Gregg was sitting in class when the principal announced over the PA system that Miss McGrath’s plane was missing. “At the time, I just imagined it flying into a cloud and not coming out again,” he remembers. “I’ve always felt grateful to Marie for what she did, for helping me adjust to my new life as a kid in California.”

In addition to William Fortenberry and Marie McGrath, who lived in Burlingame, the majority of Pan Am 7’s crew was based in the San Francisco Bay Area. “Pan American had a huge presence in San Francisco with thousands of employees,” notes Ken.

Through his research, Ken also came to know the backstories of Bay Area passengers. “They were all fascinating people,” he relays, as he summarizes some of the anecdotal details. Ruby Quong of San Francisco resigned her position as a registered nurse two days before the flight to travel to Hong Kong to care for her ailing mother. Edward Ellis, an executive with McCormick spices who lived in Hillsborough, was traveling to Honolulu to address a U.S. Chamber of Commerce convention. San Mateo machinery repairman Fred Choy planned to visit his seriously ill father in Hawaii. Louis Rodriguez, a San Francisco surgical orderly and father of three, was en route to his mother’s funeral. Pan Am pilot Robert Alexander and his wife and three children, who lived in Los Altos, heard Honolulu’s palm trees and lapping waves beckoning. “He was just a pilot on vacation,” Ken grimaces, “but they died. They all lost their lives.”

Extending beyond the Bay Area, Ken connected with a Michigan woman named Norma Clack, whose uncle was traveling with his wife and four children. “They were going back to Tokyo where he was an executive with Dow Chemical Company. They were all lost.” For years, Ken kept a picture of the Clack family on his desk: “Just to remind me, ‘You’re not doing this just for you, Ken, you’re doing this for these other families that have no closure.’”

Ken Fortenberry recalls the exact moment that triggered his maniacal campaign to find answers. When he was 13, he wrote a letter to the Civil Aeronautics Board, asking for updates on the crash investigation. “I got a bureaucratic BS response just kissing me off,” he recounts—essentially nothing had been done on the case in seven years. “I remember walking back to my house from the mailbox, just mad as hell. And at that point, I vowed as a kid that I’m gonna find out what happened to that plane if it takes me the rest of my life.”

Committed to a formidable goal, Ken faced a tough slog in the decades immediately following the crash. “You gotta remember that we didn’t have the Internet back in those days,” he says. Even tracking down an address was challenging, but Ken wrote every letter he could. “And long-distance telephone calls cost a fortune,” he points out. “I’ve been to every library you can imagine; I’ve been to archives everywhere and I kept every note I ever made on this thing from the time I was a kid.” Admittedly influenced by his childhood trauma, Ken ultimately became an editor and award-winning investigative journalist—with one constant thread: “Every spare moment I had growing up and even as an adult, I always researched this plane crash.”

Meanwhile, Gregg Herken launched his own obsessive investigation after starting work as a curator at the National Air and Space Museum in 1988. With the National Transportation Safety Board located across the street, he recognized an opportunity to discover what had happened to Marie’s plane. “I found that it was actually one of the outstanding aviation mysteries,” he says, before explaining that there were three prime suspects in the case: “One was the purser who was suicidal and who had left a copy of his changed will in the glove box of the car that he parked at the airport. The other was a passenger who bought a one-way ticket to Hawaii and three insurance policies on himself and was deeply in debt. The third was a problem with the propellers, which were prone to overspeed and had caused problems before.”

Reporters and Navy officers inspect debris recovered from the crash site

As their individual investigations progressed, thankfully so did technology. “Really, the advent of the Internet brought the story alive and made it much more possible to chase down leads,” underscores Ken. It also made it possible for the two Pan Am 7 sleuths to find each other. About 20 years ago, Ken posted a request for information on a messenger board. “And Gregg responded, ‘Hey, I’m interested in this case too!’” Gregg flew down to North Carolina to meet Ken, and “we struck it off from the very beginning and have been research colleagues ever since.”

Even as a 13-year-old, Ken thinks writing a book was always in the back of his mind. In 2020, he published the culmination of his life’s work: Flight 7 is Missing: The Search for My Father’s Killer. Over the years, he had waffled back and forth on the mystery, often for decades at a time. Initially focused on mechanical issues, he uncovered the story of William Payne, a former Navy frogman who had bought a one-way ticket and an excessive amount of life insurance before the crash. He also dug into the background of another potential suspect, Eugene Crosthwaite, a disgruntled Pan Am purser from Felton. With each new clue, Ken would find his perspective shifting. “One minute, I’d think it was an accident,” he acknowledges. “Next thing, I’d think Payne blew it up and then next thing, Crosthwaite blew it up.” In his quest for answers, Ken futilely reached out to Crosthwaite’s stepdaughter, Tania, who he says, “stiffed me for decades.”

And then he got a Facebook message out of the blue: “I think it’s about time we talk.” Ken flew to Houston to meet Tania the next day. “She pretty much laid it out that her stepdad was suicidal and out of his mind,” recounts Ken, who now blames Eugene Crosthwaite for his father’s death. “The information she gave me helped me paint more of a picture and I had a forensic psychologist weigh in on it. And he pretty much concluded what I did as well.”

However, Gregg, now a retired history professor living in Santa Cruz, reached a different conclusion. “I think it was a catastrophic mechanical failure,” he conjectures. “There was a similar incident a few years before with the same type of plane where the propeller spun out. They almost lost control of the plane but were able to make an emergency landing on an island. I think that something very similar could have happened in this case.”

Image: Courtesy of Ken Fortenberry

Having exhausted every resource available, the two are comfortably reconciled with the “agree to disagree” investigative outcome. “We have our opinions,” observes Ken, noting that no one will know for certain until they get to the bottom of the ocean and find the plane. “Gregg’s just a great friend and for him to be by my side all these years has been very special.”

As the wreckage of Clipper Romance of the Skies degrades on the seafloor, memories of the ill-fated plane also fade over time. With no burial site to visit, Ken and Gregg believe it’s imperative that the precious lives lost aren’t forgotten. “This crash did a lot to change safety regulations and expectations for aviation,” states Ken. “This was home to so many of them, and I just think their lives need to be remembered in some way.”

Ken created the Pan Am Flight 7 Memorial Committee with the goal of establishing a permanent tribute to the 44 victims. With GoFundMe and Facebook pages set up to educate and raise money, all that remained was finding an appropriate setting for the plaque. After tireless and often frustrating outreach efforts, the Memorial Committee finally found a warm reception in Millbrae. In late July, the City Council agreed to the placement of a memorial within the city, likely in Marina Vista Park, just across 101 from SFO. With the 65th anniversary of the crash being commemorated this year, Ken and Gregg eagerly anticipate the unveiling of a formal memorial, which will permanently cement the flight’s Bay Area ties. “I just feel so close to San Francisco, even today,” reflects Ken. “That’s where I left my heart. That’s where I left my dad.”

Words by Jordan Greene

Tilt your head up inside Stanford Memorial Church and you’ll discover Mary, Joseph, Sally and Billy—cherubs with faces resembling the children of university staff who lived on campus during the time the church was built. Jane Lathrop Stanford hired 28-year-old architect Charles A. Coolidge to design the church as a memorial to her late husband Leland Stanford. Construction began in January 1900 with the church envisioned as a nondenominational place of peace standing in the center of the university’s campus. An avid traveler and admirer of European art, Jane drew inspiration from the Piazza San Marco in Venice. After befriending the owner of A. Salviati & Co., a famous mosaic shop in Venice, Mrs. Stanford commissioned him to make a replica of Cosimo Roselli’s fresco of The Last Supper from the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican for the university’s new church. The mosaics were made in Venice, shipped by boat in pieces to New York and then by railroad to California. However, not long after the church opened in 1903, it was heavily damaged by the 1906 earthquake. To preserve the building, the church was disassembled. Each piece was labeled with a number, and the church was reconstructed section by section in a process that took until 1916 to finish. The 80-foot steeple that collapsed in the earthquake was never replaced. “While my whole heart is in the university, my soul is in that church,” Mrs. Stanford once remarked. Today, Stanford Memorial Church continues to play an integral role on campus as a time-honored setting for services, memorials, weddings and concerts.

Words by Sloane Citron

My brother-in-law, David, and his wife, Dalia, live in Re’ut in the center of Israel and have three strapping boys in a home dominated by sports, exercise and games. The kids always seem to be in constant competition, morning through night. We made it to the oldest boy Shai’s bar mitzvah but we didn’t make his brother Adi’s occasion. We were determined not to miss the youngest son Tomer’s event scheduled for July 18, 2022. Almost a year in advance, airline tickets were bought and hotel reservations were made.

Then, last December, my daughter Tali surprised us with the wonderful news that she was pregnant with her third child, the first two barely out of diapers. After a few doctor’s visits and some calculations, Tali’s due date was estimated to be July 12, which led us to wonder how this all might work out.

Of course, Tali and her family were going to miss the bar mitzvah, and so would her mother. But the rest of us kept our plans. My son, Josh, and his wife and children would be there as well as my daughter, Arielle, her husband and children, along with our Israeli son, Coby. I scheduled my own travel dates for July 13 to July 24.

A bar mitzvah in Israel is usually different than in the U.S. Since there is a general sense of living the religion and speaking the language (even among the secular), it is not the herculean effort that it is for a child here. Most boys read a bit of the Torah and then have a simple party right at the synagogue immediately after the service. But it is still an important milestone and we wanted to be there to support Tomer and to visit Coby.
With luck, I had successfully guessed the correct sex of my first six grandchildren, and I felt certain that Tali and Sam were going to have a girl.

Plus, with four grandsons and two granddaughters, the odds seemed slanted in that direction. The added importance in this was that if Tali had a boy, the bris (ritual circumcision) would be eight days after the birth (it’s always eight days, no matter what) and as an extremely important part of our tradition, I would want to be there as the sandek, the one who has the high honor of holding the infant during the actual event.

Tali and Sam enjoy having their children’s sex be a surprise so I knew that I would just have to wait until the actual delivery to know whether I would be on call for duty. But as I did the math, I calculated a real possibility of having to return from Israel prematurely. And in July, a flight back from Israel is a tough ticket to find.

With the unknowns of whether it was a boy and when Tali would deliver, it was an impossible puzzle to fully solve in advance and so the only thing to do was let fate take its course.

I left for Israel one day after Tali’s due date and though she was clearly ready and anxious to give birth, her body was not giving any hints that it was time. So I departed and wondered what would happen. We all started an enchanting vacation, sharing the country with the little children and visiting with our large family there. I called Tali often to see how she was doing, and she expressed her frustration of not going into labor, especially since her first two were early or right on time.

Each day that passed after Tali’s due date brought me one day closer to making the equation work. Though she was in misery, the odds were starting to work in my favor. I just needed her to give birth on July 17 and there would be no issues with being there for the bris. The 16th came and Tali could not believe that she still had no signs of an arriving child, now four days late.

Finally, the 17th came and with no delivery for my poor daughter, I was now assured that my original flight would work to get me home in time, though my money was still on it being a little girl. The bar mitzvah the next day was a memorable celebration and then, the next day, on July 19, a half-hour before Coby’s own birth date of July 20, Tali finally delivered her baby.

The rest of our time in Israel was terrific, and we left as scheduled on the 24th as planned. Then, on July 27, eight days after his birth, fulfilling the covenant that has existed for more than 3,000 years, I held little Noah David safely on my lap for the mohel to welcome him into our greater family, destined for a good life.

Words by Sheri Baer

After being set up by their sisters, Marian Harris and Ross Ferguson found their relationship taking off in unexpected directions—not just ups and downs, but also in dives, loops and rolls.

Now a married couple, the Half Moon Bay pair represent the U.S. in international aerobatics competition, essentially the equivalent of Olympic figure skating in the sky. And yes, their love of flying played a defining role in their courtship.

When they first met in late 2011, Marian admits to being intrigued, but her interest skyrocketed when Ross started talking about a Cessna 150. “I was sitting there going, ‘What? You’re what? You can do what?’” she recounts. “And I thought, ‘Oh, you’re more useful now! Maybe I won’t kick you to the curb.’” Marian laughs as she recollects what passed through her mind next: “Or, hopefully, you won’t kick me to the curb!”

Obsessed with flying since childhood (her father had his private pilot’s license), Marian grew up around planes. She enlisted in the Air Force ROTC in college, hoping it would lead to an aviation career, but the timing was off for open pilot slots so she charted a different course. In 2000, a job with SAP brought her to Palo Alto and more than a decade passed. Then her ears perked up while out on a date with Ross.

Meanwhile, Ross grew up in Seattle in the shadow of Boeing but didn’t know anyone who flew. As a teenager, he spotted a $25 intro flight lesson sign and decided to check it out. “I got hooked and kept coming back for lessons whenever I could afford it,” he remembers. A seasoned commerical pilot by the time he met Marian, Ross reactivated his flight instructor ratings and taught her how to fly. And when Marian took her first solo flight in January 2013, their partnership began to soar to new heights.

As it turns out, both Marian and Ross had always been captivated by aerobatic flight. But even for Ross, it was an idea that never got off the ground. “I just always thought, ‘Well, I could buy one of these aerobatic planes but who would go out and do it with me?’” he relates. “I’d just be doing it by myself—it’d be a solitary hobby.”

But that thinking changed when he met Marian and learned about the Yak 52.

Built by the Soviets as a military trainer during the Cold War, the Yak 52 was designed to handle extreme aerobatic and combat maneuvers. About 1,800 were constructed, and after the fall of the Soviet Union, most ended up getting exported to the West. After learning that these agile, well-engineered aircraft were actually affordable, Marian and Ross each bought one and housed them in a hangar at Half Moon Bay Airport. “We were spending more time out here than over on the other side of the hill,” she shares, “so when there was an opportunity to move close to Half Moon Bay Airport, we jumped on it.”

Learning to fly aerobatic figures and sequences, which involves upset and unusual attitude recovery, is used to improve overall safety and create better pilots. “Some people compare it to a roller coaster ride,” Marian notes, “except it’s a roller coaster you’re directing—using skills developed through extensive training.”

Catching sight of a fellow pilot practicing, Marian and Ross step outside the hangar to follow the action unfolding in the sky. “He’s probably pulling around six or seven Gs, which means six or seven times the force of gravity,” Ross observes as he launches into the piloting equivalent of a play by play. “Everything starts and ends from level,” he explains. “This one is called a Humpty Bump. It’s just straight up and then straight down. When he comes out, we’ll see what he does next.” As Ross tracks the plane with his finger, the pilot takes his aircraft vertical and does a one and three-quarter roll. “And this is a Hammerhead, which is just a rotation at zero air speed,” Ross continues, “and then a snap roll on the way back down.”

Watching the aircraft seemingly hurtle to the ground, a question naturally erupts: “That looks terrifying! What does it feel like?” Without a beat, Marian and Ross respond in unison: “FUN!” Still, Ross acknowledges that about 80% of pilots get airsick the first time. “It’s uncomfortable at first and then you build up to it,” he says.

After they learned entry-level aerobatics, a friend and fellow Yak 52 pilot encouraged them to get more serious. “You’ve got the airplane, why don’t you go to the Yak 52 World Championship?,” he suggested and connected them with a highly-regarded coach from Kazakhstan for competitive solo aerobatics training.

Given that the Yak 52 design was “frozen” early on, all of the aircraft are virtually identical, making it a perfect candidate for a one-design competition. “It really levels the playing field,” notes Ross, who explains that competitors typically “arrive and drive” aircraft assigned to them versus having to ship their own aircraft to contests. “It basically takes the cost of owning the latest airplane out of the equation,” he says. The first Yak 52 World Aerobatic Championship (informally referred to as the YAK WAC) was held in 2008 and is hosted every two to three years by a different country.

After squeezing in training around their day jobs, Ross and Marian decided to go for it in 2017, traveling to Tula, Russia, with their Half Moon Bay teammate Brian Branscomb, to compete in the 5th Yak 52 championship. With thousands of spectators watching, the competition involves flying a series of sequences—typically four minutes in length—that include a mix of compulsory and “free” figures that the pilots pick themselves.

“The judges want to see the presentation right in front of them,” Marian explains. “That’s the real difficulty,” adds Ross. “It takes a certain amount of time to learn how to do the figures, but then you have to put the figures all together in this sequence and keep it within a little 1,000-meter aerobatic box. It’s like flying between a bunch of skyscrapers.”

The American team claimed fourth in their first Yak 52 competition. “If there was an award for the team who learned the most, we would have won gold,” Ross smiles. The couple flew in two U.S. contests after Tula and recently participated in another world championship in Torun, Poland. They hope to see more U.S. aerobatic pilots joining them at the next YAK WAC, date and location still pending.

The couple’s Half Moon Bay hangar is filled with flight memorabilia—tail feathers, trophies, medals and a striking collection of photos and flags. After earning her license, Marian learned that her great aunt was an original air racer in the late ’20s and ’30s. She proudly displays a black & white image of Elizabeth Kelley posing with Amelia Earhart and the legendary test pilot Pancho Barns. Also here are banners and flyers from their other commitments. The two pilots prioritize taking flight for “both fun and community,” which includes volunteering for the San Mateo Disaster Airlift Response Team, helping coordinate searches for entangled whales and hosting and supporting Young Eagle flights to introduce kids to flying and aviation careers.

Although they credit flying with bringing them together, “It’s a part of it, but it’s not everything,” Marian is quick to point out. But for now at least, they’re relishing every moment of each roller coaster ride in the sky.

News Flash: The Loch Ness Monster has moved to Los Altos! But don’t worry—I’m Muffy, and I’ve got things under control. Surprisingly not of Scottish descent, I’m a Chihuahua mix—at least that’s what Adobe Animal Hospital told my family after they rescued me 14 years ago from a Safeway parking lot in Campbell. I’m forever grateful and do my best to protect Ross, Elizabeth, Kathryn and Caroline each day. Any given morning, you’ll find me poolside, and although I may look relaxed, I’m constantly standing guard. When I hear any movement from the creature, I launch into action. Don’t let my tiny build of 11 pounds, gentle nature and cute chest curls fool you—I have a very intimidating bark and deep snarl. I run back and forth at lightning speed between shallow and deep ends to ward off the white tubular beast. Ross and Elizabeth call the monster ‘the pool sweep’ (I know, silly right?), and I keep it at bay while they work in the garden, grill up dinner or choose to risk life and limb by actually swimming in the water. The dreadful pool monster has taunted me ever since I was a young pup. I remember minding my own business, watching its long tail move swiftly through the deep waters, but as it turned to approach, our eyes locked and it boldly sprayed my innocent muzzle. Ever since—it’s been game on! So long as I’m on watch, family, friends and even ducks are welcome to stop in for a visit. I’m the ultimate backyard protector, so everyone is safe in my paws.

Words by Jordan Greene

As you drive past Woodside’s Village Hill heading into town, the lifelike Spring and Sprite will undoubtedly catch your eye. Installed in 2010, the two bronze sculptures of a majestic thoroughbred mare and lively foal welcome visitors and commemorate Woodside’s rich equestrian heritage. In 2008, Woodside’s town council voted unanimously to approve the statues, and a campaign was launched on Woodside’s annual Day of Horses celebration to raise the necessary $108,000 in funding. Crafted by internationally acclaimed Colorado sculptor Veryl Goodnight, the striking pair weigh in at 1,200 pounds and 300 pounds, about the same weight as live horses. Goodnight describes horses as her favorite subject since childhood and credits them with being her greatest teachers. A longtime symbol of the community’s culture, horses played a vital role in Woodside’s history—whether providing transportation, plowing farmland or hauling logs. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, Woodside became known for great estates with grand stables including Folger, Why Worry and Runnymede. Today, horses and riders enjoy convenient hitching posts and hundreds of miles of trails throughout the area. As Woodside’s official greeters, Spring and Sprite require regular upkeep. Once a year, the community gathers to “groom” the mare and foal. After a thorough washing, a thin layer of wax is rubbed into the horses to preserve the bronze color of the sculptures.

It’s one of the views most associated with Stanford University: iconic Palm Drive leading to campus. Originally planted in 1893, the one-mile stretch of parallel Canary Island palm trees creates a majestic path that opens up to views of Stanford’s Oval, Quad and Memorial Church. From 1886-1888, famed landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted developed the plan for Stanford University and encouraged Leland Stanford to take a Mediterranean-style approach to the campus. His last major additions to the plan included Palm Drive and the Oval. Stanford’s first president, David Starr Jordan, is credited with advocating for the specific style of tree to mark the school’s grand entrance. “These long corridors with their stately pillars, these circles of waving palms, will have their part in the students’ training as surely as the chemical laboratory or seminary room,” Jordan proclaimed in his 1891 Opening Day address. With more than 160 majestic palms lining the route, Palm Drive was initially a bumpy, pothole-ridden dirt road but in preparation for motorized vehicles, the street was resurfaced in an oil and gravel mixture followed decades later by asphalt-cement. As early as 1905, Palm Drive was beset by traffic issues, which led to restricting it to horse-drawn carriages, bicycles and pedestrians. The ban on automobiles and “gasoline bicycles” was lifted by trustees in 1914, and the street returned to providing a “frondly” welcome for Stanford visitors. Averaging 50 to 60 feet tall at maturity, many of the statuesque trees were originally imported from outside the U.S. and planted as seedlings—with donations and local neighborhood rescues contributing to replacements over the years.

Words by Eva Barrows and Sheri Baer

Driving through Lower South Hillsborough, it’s possible to catch a glimpse of the United States’ most iconic residential structure. Okay, it’s not the actual White House, but it does make you take a second look. What’s peeking through the trees on El Cerrito Avenue is an all-white neoclassical 25,000-square-foot Georgian colonial mansion that looks so much like the real thing that it’s called the Western White House.

This Hillsborough estate is legendary for being redesigned by one of California’s most distinguished architects, Julia Morgan, for one of the country’s most well-known families, the Hearsts.

But its rich history dates back even earlier. Originally constructed in 1878, the estate was purchased by the Crocker family, followed by Burlingame contractor Charles Lundgren, who deployed engineering wizardry in 1915 to physically move the mansion a half-mile to its current location. In 1930, George Hearst, the eldest son of newspaper baron William Randolph Hearst, tapped famed California architect Julia Morgan to redesign the property, after which the house passed through a series of owners, including the founder and developer of Foster City and a shoe tycoon family.

In 1997, financial services executive Shailesh Mehta and his wife Kalpa made the Western White House their home. When the property recently went back on the market, PUNCH seized the opportunity to learn more about its fascinating history and what it’s like to live on one of the Peninsula’s palatial—and most presidential—estates.

Constructed by prosperous families during the Gold Rush era, very few of Hillsborough’s legacy estates remain. Along with the Carolands Chateau built for Pullman railcar heiress Harriet Pullman Carolan, the Western White House is a prized reminder of the region’s Gilded Age architectural grandeur.

Not only did the Western White House start out in a different location, it started out with a different name. The original shingle-style mansion, Uplands I, was built in 1878 for one of the town’s founding fathers, William Henry Howard. At that time, the roof was steeply pitched with soaring chimneys and domed turret rooftop windows adding Victorian character. After George Hearst bought the property, he commissioned architect Julia Morgan to bring presidential grandeur to the Peninsula while she was in the midst of constructing Hearst Castle, his father’s San Simeon, California, estate.

Morgan was the first woman architect licensed to practice in California and the first woman to graduate from Paris’ prestigious Ecole des Beaux-Arts architectural program. She transformed the formerly dark Victorian into a light and breezy classical home fit for a U.S. president—complete with a rose garden, cherry blossom trees and oval office.
Situated on 2.9 acres and about half the size of its inspirational East Coast counterpart, the mansion boasts 24 rooms, including 11 bedrooms, 10 full baths and 4 half baths.

After residing in the Western White House for nearly a quarter-century, Shailesh and Kalpa Mehta were ready to downsize and enjoy a more travel-oriented lifestyle. Now living in Atherton, they’ve had time to reflect on their chapter in the iconic Hillsborough mansion, and Shailesh sat down with PUNCH to share some insights and memories.

What drew you to buy the property back in 1997?

There were several factors that played a role. We had a growing family, a son and a daughter. We were absolutely impressed by the grounds and the beauty—three acres of flat land with two sides bordered by a creek. It’s extremely private with fully manicured gardens and a big swimming pool, so the grounds were very impressive. The house was gorgeous, designed by Julia Morgan, the famous architect. It had very interesting previous owners, and security was terrific because the house is not visible from the street. Therefore, we felt that it would be a very safe and secure home.

How did you feel about living in a home known as the Western White House?

Actually, I have mixed feelings about it. On one hand, some people get very impressed that this is the Western White House; on the other hand, I thought it was a little bit of a loud statement for myself and my family. We’re not “White House-type” people. We didn’t buy it because of that name. We didn’t even realize until after we decided to buy it that this was how it was known. The story that I heard was that one of the Hearsts had an aspiration to be president of the United States and therefore the Georgian design that Julia Morgan chose was in line with the White House—the kind of remodeling she did to create the turret into an oval office, and the entry looks like the pillars, and it’s one of the rare houses that has the front and side and back all ornate. So it’s a really beautiful home, and it does look like the White House.

What did you enjoy most about living on the property?

I loved the layout. The house has a basement and three levels, and it has an elevator. There are four different floor plans: the basement, the first floor, the second floor and the third floor. We organized the house so that the first floor, the main floor, has the public rooms, so we had a living room, formal dining room, formal living room, a parlor, the oval office, and then a family room and a kitchen, and it was all public area, so when we had visitors or would host a social event, people could come and go. The second floor was all bedrooms, and we converted it to a private floor. The master suite is huge. It’s almost like half a floor with his and her bathrooms, the bedroom and an office in it. The third floor we made into an entertainment floor, so we had a game room, a pool table and a movie theater, and you can sit outside on the terrace. The unusual height is grandfathered, so you can see all the grounds and the trees. And then we had one guest suite on that floor. And the basement has all the utilities and services rooms, and there’s also a beautiful wine cellar and I built a big gym to work out. Even though it’s a big home, it’s a very practical and usable home. It doesn’t feel like a huge mansion. It’s warm, and you feel like you can live in it.

What struck you most about the historical nature and design of the home?

The experience was very unique in the sense that it’s a beautifully laid out house. There is not much square footage wasted the way Julia Morgan designed it. It has a rich history but it’s not an historical home, so we were able to make necessary changes, to bring things more in line with today’s requirements and current lifestyle than from when it was built. We were able to make adjustments without losing the character of the home. When we did this, we realized how well built the home was. The way she structured it, it was so solid. We were surprised by the width of the beams and she added layers of bricks between some of the sidewall to give it further strength and that’s why this house was never affected by any earthquakes. And the tiles! Julia Morgan loved using stonework or tiles from a quarry in Sacramento, I was told. Gorgeous, beautiful tiles. She had a very unique eye for stonework.

How did you experience the home as a family?

We have grown-up children and teenage grandchildren now, and they all loved it. We have four grandkids, and my grandkids were crying when we decided to move out. The house was always packed on weekends and holidays. We celebrated Thanksgiving, we celebrated Christmas, we celebrated Diwali, we celebrated so many festivals. My son lives in San Francisco with his family, so they would come and stay over the weekend. My daughter lives in Santa Barbara, and when they would come up, my son and his family would join, so the whole house was filled. The grandkids loved the pool and the movie theater. Not just for watching movies—they would make their own shows, magic shows and skits. The house has four different ways to go up and down, so they had a lot of fun playing hide and seek as they grew up. We have so many great memories. When they found out that we were going to list it, our two granddaughters hid notes under my pillow and my wife’s pillow that said, “Don’t sell! Don’t sell!”

Who do you envision being the next owner?

In my mind, properties like this are unique properties, and so the buyers are also very unique. It’s not your standard run-of-the-mill home on the market. There is a demand for houses, but for this kind of property, the demand is different and the buyer is different. I would say it’s a CEO or celebrity-type home or a sports athlete or an international buyer who wants an iconic property. People who want security and safety but still want to do a lot of entertaining, whether it’s political fundraisers or charity events. Some young couple might fall in love with this property, especially if they have three or four children. We always found it very lucky for us and our family. Some houses have good vibes when you are in them, and that’s the sense we had when we moved there.

Y es, I’m just that content. In fact, if you look up the definition of contentment, you’ll find my name: Dre. Okay, I’m kidding, but it’s only because the dictionary writers haven’t met me yet. If they had, they’d also include my name under the definition of “true mutt” because I’m believed to be a mixture of Dachshund, Beagle and Border Terrier with perhaps a dash of Corgi. It must be a winning combination because a photo of irresistible me is what brought me to my forever home. Four years ago, my family (Ben, Kelly, Kogan and Bo) had just moved to Menlo Park, and as Kelly tells the story, Ben was so excited about their new big backyard that he thought it would be “brilliant” to surprise her with a puppy. “Before I knew it,” Kelly says, “I had a two-month-old puppy and a four-month-old baby on my hands—I cried.” Just imagine that, crying with happiness at the sight of me! Kogan, who was four at the time, instantly fell in love and proclaimed me “Draymond Green,” after his favorite Warriors player. Draymond turned into Dre, and I grew up keeping a close watch on baby Bo. One time, he cut his finger and needed stitches and I felt so badly for him that I yelped and moaned right alongside him through the entire ordeal. Mostly though, I’m always smiling ear to ear. In fact, neighbors who pass us on walks take one look at my gleeful grin and always comment, “Wow, that’s one happy dog!” Content, happy Dre—that’s me, whether I’m officially in the dictionary or not

Words by Sloane Citron

My family, except for our son who lives in Israel, was finally all getting together to light the candles on the last night of Hanukkah, the holiday of the miracle. It’s called that because 2,200 years ago, after the Maccabean Jews regained control of Jerusalem and rededicated the Temple, there was only enough oil for one night for lighting the Temple lamp and yet it lasted eight nights.

The 14 of us planned to assemble early on Sunday afternoon after my daughter Arielle, her husband Danny and their two sons (one a newborn) flew in from their home in Los Angeles. It was a day that I had been looking forward to, since I knew that this year the two older grandchildren, having recently turned three, were mature enough to have some understanding of what we were doing, be able to sing the prayers and songs and enjoy opening their presents.

While the clean-up is a bit onerous and falls to me, I love the absolute commotion of these get-togethers. My wife was smart and ordered a bouncy house for the backyard, since, with six grandchildren, it was definitely a party. One family after another arrived, the kids streaming inside to see their cousins, their aunts and uncles, their safta and saba. The house reverberated with the cacophony of voices, screams and singing.
The bouncy house was a big hit, and the kids spent close to an hour cascading off the sides of the air-filled play towers, the netted walls and each other. An occasional collision caused some momentary tears before the affected were quickly back into action. Except for the newborn, they all loved rolling around, shooting balls into the rubber hoop and jumping into each other.

When the sun went down around five, we calmed the children down a bit and prepared for the big event—lighting the candles. There was one Hanukkiah for each family, four in all. Thanks to my kids and their spouses, their children already have a good grasp of the prayers and songs that are all part of the lighting ceremony. Seeing all nine candles (one is used for lighting) brightly burning, the overhead lights turned off for effect, was a spectacular sight and a special spiritual moment for us all.

One of the challenges for little Jewish kids is learning the difference between birthday candles, which, of course, they get to blow out, and the candles for Shabbat and our holidays, which decidedly they do not get to blow out. So there is a moment of indecision for the children when their initial inclination is to blow and their parents have to yank them away so that the candles can burn down naturally.

Once this was done, it was time for presents. We are not really a “wrapping” family and each family—oldest child Josh and wife Adara going first—took their turn handing out their gifts. This meant, though, that each child received six or more exciting new things to pore over, from books to stuffed animals to Paw Patrol backpacks and Thomas train sets. Of course, it was too much, but there was great joy in seeing their happy faces. Then it was time for dinner, which, because no one wanted to take away time from the gettogether, we ordered in from a local restaurant. Lots of salmon, salad and fries. Of course, we had latkes and applesauce, and dreidels and gold chocolate coins were flying everywhere.

Late that afternoon, however, before the candle lighting, we had decided to go on a walk around the block, a good way to have the kids burn off even more of their unlimited energy and a pleasant way to enjoy the autumn coolness. As we readied for the walk, however, my daughter Talia realized that she had accidentally forgotten to bring shoes for her youngest child Levi. I suggested she search her car to see if there were any hidden away, and after rummaging around she found one right foot shoe, but only that single one. My kids are easygoing about such things, which I think is a wonderful trait, and Talia and her husband Sam were fine with little Levi riding in a wagon with no shoes.

“Just wait a minute,” I told them, and I ran upstairs to our attic and pulled out the first cardboard box resting there, full of old children’s clothes stored for some 25 years. I dumped the entire contents onto the floor, and there it was, one—and only one—little shoe, a left-footed boys desert boot that looked to be about the right size. I grabbed it and ran down to the front yard and placed it, Cinderella-like, onto Levi’s foot, where it fit perfectly.
It was a magical moment, one that could not be planned or ever duplicated. We all laughed hysterically and agreed wholeheartedly that this was the true Hanukkah miracle of 2021!

Words by Silas Valentino

If Jan Null is stirred from his slumber in the middle of the night due to the patter of rain outside, he can forget about catching any more Zs.
“For most meteorologists, when the weather wakes you up, you can’t get back to sleep,” he admits. “The worst is if it’s raining and I didn’t forecast for it …”

The meditative sound of falling rain is not the sonic of relaxation for Jan; instead, it represents infinite drops of data that he intently studies.
Through his efforts, Jan has become the go-to source for weather information in the Bay Area. If you’ve checked a weather report on the Peninsula in the last 47 years, there’s a good chance that Jan had some part in its analysis.

Following 23 years at the National Weather Service where he ultimately served as the lead forecaster for the Bay Area, Jan struck out on his own in 1998 with a consulting company called Golden Gate Weather Services.
Jan provides forensic meteorology services to assist legal and insurance professionals (his wife Susan Hollis jokes that he does “CSI: Weather”) and he’s been retained in over 600 cases while testifying in some 40 trials.

Elsewhere in his career, Jan established an oft-consulted weather index, created one of the first (if not the first) National Weather websites and he’s even renamed a regional wind pattern; following the 1991 Oakland firestorm, he dubbed what was once the Santa Ana winds as the Diablo wind to describe hot, dry wind from the northeast.

Impressive achievements all, but Jan’s proudest contribution is the decades of research he’s generated on Pediatric Vehicular Heatstroke, leading to countless children’s lives saved from overheating inside calescent cars.
As a devotee to data, Jan’s output for local meteorological research is essentially unquantifiable; however, he and his career are illuminating data points for understanding the weather, and how we’re always getting better at doing so.

“I’m coming up on 47 and a half years and probably the thing I’ve noticed that’s changed the most is the accuracy of forecasts,” he says. “Back when I started, there was only a three-day forecast and that was considered cutting-edge. Now we’re up to seven days in a forecast—we’ve gained a day each decade of my career!”

The daily routine of weather analysis begins at 5AM when Jan typically awakens and heads into his home office with a banana and a glass of juice in hand. His favorite coffee mug was from a swag table at a meteorology conference. It simply says “Integrity” and Jan takes sips with intention.
He combs his hair neatly to the side and cuffs both ends of his jeans. Sometimes he has a pair of Apple AirPods sticking out of his ears as he attends to the latest novel from Michael Connelly. Jan is an avid reader, habitually consuming two works of fiction at a time to help balance his day of reading scores of nonfiction journals and data sets.

In 1993, Jan was at the National Weather Service and noticed how the Internet was quickly integrating into daily life. He believed it was only logical for the weather to be on it as well and used HTML to develop a simple web page. It has since morphed to become what is now weather.gov.

“I have a communicator-slash-public service gene for sharing information,” Jan reveals of his motivation to create and share. “And there are a fair number of introverts in the weather service, so I’m the one who picks up when the media calls. I think at some point I’ve talked to every journalist in the Bay Area.”

Pronounced Jan with a hard J (as in, not Yawn), he’s a father of two kids who are both still living in the Bay Area, now with children of their own.
Over the course of his life, Jan has amassed each of the major regional area codes: 415, 510 and 650. He was born in Oakland, raised in Castro Valley and worked in Redwood City for the National Weather Service. He’s lived in Saratoga but recently relocated to Half Moon Bay.

After serving three years in the Army, including 11 months in Vietnam, Jan graduated from UC Davis in 1974 with a degree in Atmospheric Science. He’d go on to earn his master’s in 1992 from San Jose State University with a thesis titled A Climatology of San Francisco Rainfall. He’s been deciphering and communicating weather data to the Bay Area ever since.

“I learned early on that people’s weather memories are … suspect at best,” he says with a humble laugh. “I’ll hear how, ‘This is the biggest we’ve ever had,’ but if you look at the numbers, it’s actually the 20th biggest storm. This is why I quantify the data.”

To make sense of our storms, Jan developed the Bay Area Storm Index (BASI), which measures the strength of wind and rain events in the region. Each storm is rated on a scale of 10.

For instance, the atmospheric river in October 2021, when rain was persistent for days, was considered by some as the “storm of the century,” but Jan has the data to decipher between facts and hyperbole.

“The only 10 on BASI ever recorded was in December 1995 when there were 103-mile gusts on Angel Island,” he notes. “This past storm in October was a 9.7. There was a 9.8 before and now we’ve had three 9.7s. I’d call this past storm a ‘once in a decade’ storm.”

Since high school, Jan has celebrated his unique perspective for the natural world by capturing images or moments in time. On his Instagram profile, he shares what he calls his, “serious (okay obsessed)” amateur photography.
He began by shooting sports such as basketball using a Hasselblad (the same Swedish camera that the Apollo astronauts had) before upgrading to a Leica camera. He always keeps a camera nearby and while serving in the Army, he’d slip the Leica inside his munitions pouch.

Describing himself as a “snap shooter,” Jan finds an everyday moment in nature and begins tinkering with composition before he shoots. He remains an amateur (“I already have a good job. I don’t want a new job,” he reasons.) but this doesn’t mean he’s not published.

Upon their move to Half Moon Bay, Jan and Susan actively sought ways to give back to their newly-adopted community. One such method was to support the Coastside Women’s Club and the nonprofit’s annual holiday boutique. Jan donated 35 of his photographs that were bundled together in an anthology. All copies of Treasures of the Coastside by Jan Null sold out within an hour, directly funding scholarships for the local high school.

“It’s a very active community and it’s nice to be part of it,” he says. “We just finished a major remodel and apparently we didn’t get the memo that when you are older, you downsize … now we have a guest room for our grandkids.”

Last year, Jan gifted his grandson a rain gauge and as the rains kept coming down last October in that once-in-a-decade storm, to Jan’s delight, his grandson ventured out into the elements to collect his own set of weather data.